Create, organize and communicate your game vision. Welcome to the first professional game design tool, articy:draft. You can now create interactive stories, characters, objects and locations in one highly visual and versatile game design tool.

Reviews

“The sheer power of articy:draft has enormous capabilities for our games and we're super excited to make ANYTHING easier in our development pipeline!”
– Paul Trowe, Replay Games

“With articy:draft I manage to stay on top of the complex stories I work on. It's the ideal tool for interactive storytelling. I wouldn't start a project without it anymore.”
– Mattias Filler, Story Writer, Gothic series, Risen and Risen 2

“Congratulations for such an amazing product! articy:draft really rocks. It instantly hit me after I tried out the trial for about 30 minutes.”
– Alexander Grunert, Lead Designer, A Crowd Apart

About This Software

Create, organize and communicate your game vision.

Welcome to the first professional game design tool, articy:draft.

You can now create interactive stories, characters, objects and locations in one highly visual and versatile game design tool. With a strong focus on non-linear storytelling, articy:draft makes writing for games blindingly easy. Build branching story or dialogue flows and at the same time manage dramaturgy and player experience. You can create mission trees, game state graphs, and skill or tech trees with our unique flow editor. articy:draft also allows planning your levels and game worlds, designing all the objects in your game and even export the data for further use.

articy:draft SE is the single-user version of articy:draft and features everything from the professional single-user application (v1.5), so you too can benefit largely from the integrated workflow and asset management functionalities. articy:draft is the breakthrough tool for game design, drastically increasing efficiency and a joy to use throughout the entire production. The SE version is for non-commercial use only, unless you upgrade to the commercial license.

We ask you to upgrade to the full version of articy:draft some time after the release of your game. Once revenues are coming in, your rent is paid and family fed, we ask you to help pay our rent and feed our families. We count on your fairness to find the right time to upgrade. Just buy the upgrade here on Steam when you're ready.

Key Features:

Dare to branch out: Manage complexity in non-linear story structures with choices.

TL;DR: This tool has been amazing to work with and has really helped organize my content but is laggy on lower spec'd machines.

I had a system to managing my content, flows, and notes with a hierarchy of folders and files and that system was working to a degree. But it was still more effort than I wanted and keeping track of all the different files and documents was becoming a daunting task.

When I saw this tool I wasn't sure what it would do different for me, but even having a single organized source of all the data was a selling point. Then I looked more into the customizable templates, data validation options, visual maps, character maps, and most importantly the journey flows that you can create and was thrilled at the features.

That said, I use this on two machines; my dev machine while developing and a laptop when I am out and about and want to log thoughts/ideas. On the dev/gaming machine it runs incredibly smoothly, no issue whatsoever, but on my laptop it is laggy. I won't argue the minimum requirements, but it has not been a solid experience on my lower spec'd machine.

The sharing and collaboration options are also very exciting, though I have not had an opportunity to test those out yet.

A bit of a learning curve for those new to this sort of set up, but I find it extremely useful. I can see this is very useful for other things aside from game making, though that's the main thing I'm using it for. I've yet to get into the scripting and complex/back end stuff, but the upfront storyline, characters, dialogue, locations and so forth are fairly quicker to learn to do and once you get started, it becomes much easier and faster to move along. I went and got the more advanced version because I may eventually get into more complex stuff later, but for now the simplier parts are easy to work with and do what I mainly need for now. I do highly recommend this program to others if they are wanting to do serious projects or personal projects seriously (especially if you're the only person doing the project), free or commercial.

Interface: 7/10The interface needs a little redisign in order to be less confusing. i was able to learn the interface in a few hours but the main interface and the tutorials to use it are a little lackluster

Uses: 10/10This is a program which does what it set out to do, to help you design games. The set up time in order to create you story or game is a long road as you have to make templates to have items or characters recorded in them, and before you can create templates you have to make features like a feature for more advanced characters or a feature for dialog. Once you make all those though its very streamline and easy, and any change to the templates changes all the items across the entire project allowing you to add things like dialog or a thing for the name of the enchantment for your sword.

Also to top this you can export all those features with all your information into a file and have your game or program refer to that file in order to build your level or decide character dialog. This program is extremly powerful.

Price: 7/10Price is a big issue for this title and it does cost alot to buy this product, however there are a few things to remeber, it does go on sale, they do not sell 1 million copies of this program they sell 100,000 copies of this program so they have to increase the cost to make thier money back, and this is a very well made and advanced program and is not a throw away thing like so many other programs that are on steam. AAA game stuidos use this for pete's sake.

Usability: 9/10this program does not go out of its way to make itself complicated and unusable. most of the mechanics in this program can be learned in a couple of hours of messing with it and you can look up how to do the more advanced things if you are serous about using this program to help you build a game with the file export feature can be learned online in tutorials.

Final score: 8.25/10

Get it on sale and its: 9/10

Note:

This is the review for this program WITH the Extra content from the service pack.

DO NOT get this program and not the second pack and expect the same results as me. The orginal version is unfinished and in great need of the second pack in the DLC section below.

I would say that if you intend not to get this program with the service pack below, don't get this program at all because it stinks without it.

This program is usable but has so many features that it almost requires a dedicated person just to use it if you don't want to make it a full time job for yourself. It is eventually easy to use, however there are some elements of the interface that do not respond in the way you think would make sense. For example when in the 'Flow' Viewer. you would expact to be able to click-drag to move across the chart as it gets larger; but you cannot, nor can you use the arrow keys on the keyboard.

In the end if you need somethin to keep track of a large project with complex relationships between characters and/or locations this will be useful. There is a learning curve and it would be foolish to ignore the tutorials.

On the other hand if you're making a fairly linier project; (A goes to B and not A goes to B1, B2, or B3) then you'd be better of just using a generic work processing application.

It takes a while to get used to the interface, because things are layered multiple levels deep. But once you figure out that you can split windows, use tabs or open multiple windows it starts to shine: Have a high level overview of the plot while looking at your character notes, or drill down into your flow and flesh out the details, always while able to easily refer to the notes you made about characters, locations, etc.

This isn't a brainstorming tool per-se, it is a powerful tool that the story people use in actual game development, which is where the export capabilities come in handy - the Excel and XML exports have come in really handy for futher processing.

The pricing is a bit confusing, because this is basically a $299 product split into 3 $99 products (articy draft 1.0, upgrade to 2.x, and a commercial license) but at the same time it means you can start using it for $99 and only spend the extra money if you actually need a commercial license, or if you want the 2.x feature set.

If you're just looking for a tool to draft out a story, there are cheaper alternatives, but if you want to keep track of elaborate plots (think RPGs or Make-your-own-adventure books, or stuff like A Song of Ice and Fire with the many intertwining plot lines) or keep ALL material of your universe (Characters, Stories, Locations, Random Notes, Images,...) together, the software is worth a close look.

As a potential downside, there is only one "flow", so if you're still figuring out your story and have a few scenes that aren't connected, you can't have a "Scrapbook" flow but need to find space in the main flow. The Journey feature might come in at least a little bit handy for that.

As an organization tool, it's very powerful. However, the pricepoint is convoluted. It's really intended for non-indie studios. Additionally, there's a LOT of missing features in 1.0 which they added in 2.0. As someone who spent his Tax Return to help this software to get off the ground, being charged another 100$ to get the features the software should have launched with is offensive.

We early adopters were basically used as a testing ground for software we paid 300$ for, and then were asked to upgrade.

It's powerful. I'll make no arguments toward the value of the software. But the price-point/ethics of the developer are questionable at best.

Articy:Draft is a must have product for anyone interested in game design. Make no mistake; there is a learning curve to this tool as with any professional grade software. Once you've learned it, the productivity you'll gain will more than make up the initial learning time. I used the team version of Articy:Draft 2.1 in my Game World Creation class, and what it enabled the class to create is beyond anything I was expecting.

Pros:It can handle just about any game design task you can throw at it. Complex branching dialogs? Easy. Detailed NPCs with complex relationships? No problem. Have a massive game world with many areas interconnecting? Have at it. And once you're all done, hit the export button and get a nice XML file with all your text content ready for use in your game engine of choice.

Cons:* Price. You get what you pay for, but you will pay for it. Regardless of how awesome it is, $200 is a steep price to pay if you're doing this as a hobby. Knock that up to $300 if you want to go commercial.* Export Formats. While I did list this in the Pro section, it's also a con as well. The docx export is difficult to read, almost to the point of being useless as a general purpose document. The xml format will take some serious digging through and studying to fully understand how Articy:Draft is linking things together. The product could really use some polish on this aspect.* No resizing of areas. When you draw a zone in a location, there's no resizing it, other than grabbing it point by point and moving them around. This was a major source of headaches in my class as many groups discovered they had scale problems and needed to resize things. Much gnashing of teeth was done that day.

Bottom Line:If you're serious about game design, buy this software. You will not regret it.

This is one awesome tool which I use to detail my RPG campaigns. I can create character sheets & monster sheets with ease, detail the flow of the campaign using Flow Fragments, and using the nesting feature, I can detail the scenarios with supporting documentation.

The best and most important feature for me is cross referencing. This allows me to link my maps, NPC locations, NPC images as well as monster images to all the campaign information previously created. Audio & video can also be linked, providing previously recorded dialogue/movies to be used as a gaming session is played.

During game play, I constantly refer back to the articy: draft campaign document to keep me grounded in the campaign design while allowing me to create and record impromptu additions to the story and plot lines, as rquired by the PC's actions and motivations.

This is a very powerful tool if you at all interested in video game story writing. You can create branching dialogue paths with ease, or if you want a script version of the story, this can do this as well. I would recommend getting the "DLC" for this software for the extra utilities that this brings. For as high of level of program as this is, and as much as you get, $100 is really not a bad price tag for a professional level design tool.

This software is a must have for any serious game designer. It has most of the tools you could ask for. One of the things i like the most is the color system. You can use colors to represent things and working with colors can (massively) boost your productivity. Not just that you can choose colors for every object you create (including npcs, story or locations) but also that there's a color scheme on the program itself and it's not just black & white, which again helps boost your productivity (black & white are boring colors).

I'm actively using it to develop games. And i've found various other uses for the flow chart system, for example i've designed my programming code with it (i.e. in what order i will write which parts of the program and how they are connected). The program is also excellent for story-writing, actually beyond excellent. It's perfect for that.

With the templates system you can apply whatever properties you like to anything you create.

The entities system is used to create NPCs, Monsters, Items and other such objects which can be referenced or linked to locations and flow fragments (story parts)

With a little out-of-the-box thinking, this program can be super useful in more things than just game design. The flowchart system could help you design virtually anything you'd like.

If you're interested in the program i highly recommend you try out the 2 week trial, the learning curve is there, but it's not steep so you can definitely learn to use the program in under a week just by doing.

If what you're designing is really important to you, this program is definitely worth it's price.

The good is that the program is very effeciant, easy to pick up and use, and can be used exactly how you need to use it. For that I am able to combile long list of cards for my cardgame projects, plan out complex dialogues for videogames or drama, and do other things that can be difficult without an all in one like this. I highly reccomend the basic edition of Articey for that.

Now for the bad, and why I say only buy Draft SE and not the DLC's. For one they are PATCHES. You are paying a hundred dollars for what every single other software on the market supplies for free. They are denying you content in a later patch and requiring you to pay more. For those with a bunch of capital and success it's not that bad; but for indie guys like me it's a complete ripoff. All the patches let you do is more features it should already have, including being able to use the exports (The base version only gives you a buggy microsoft file type as a choice)

If you want to try Articey, it's only a matter of time until their software is forked and availible for free somewhere else. So unless you have the money to pony up I would pass on this unless it's on sale. Don't get me wrong it's a great tool and I heartily reccomend getting it but the Dev's had made it clear they refuse to provide a quality product unless you buy the software three times (Which is effectivley what the DLC is)

This is a very interresting piece of software for any game developer of any sort and level of professionalism.Beyond its clear usefulness for indy and professional realm, I would also highly recommend this software to all game design and game programmer schools to develop more constructive and critically thought games and that is for all domain of a video game, mechanics, designs, and more to achieve and emphasize on product fulfilement and quality.

The software is fully functional, it requires "some" learning curve but nothing from outer space. price is a bit steep to be honest, but this software could very quickly become a game development standard tool worldwide if people at Articydraft keep bringing more functionality and FLEXIBILITY that could and would supplant traditional GDD and TDD platforms and methods.On my side and from the very little experience I have with this software, I can say with confidence I am more than ready to give Word, excel, or others like Open Office a kiss of goodbye, kick those out as Articydraft can make it happen. I am moving a GDD and TDD onto a Articydraft as we speak.

Though pricey, sales seem to happen at regular intervals, keep it on your watch list if you're looking to get into game design.

With all of my game ideas in text form in a folder on my computer, I'm loving organizing them with this. I am using pics from google to help visualize it better and making it even stronger than I thought it could be.

EDIT (2/3/2015)I'd gone from computer to paper on the walls and back to this again, and I have to say it still holds up well under the pressure I put on it. I still feel it's pricey, but darned if the program doesn't still do EXACTLY what I need it to do...

Which is take my whirlwind mind of ideas and coalesce it into a fixed story with branch paths. Very very very very very very useful.

The Most amazing and flexible story outlining program out now!!! a Must Buy... NOTE: if you plan on getting it... the basic version is fine... but for features such as actual code insertion and mechanics design... upgrade to Articy:Draft 2.